First, the term must be defined: By "Orientalists," we mean the writers who write about Islamic thought and Islamic civilization.

Then, we must classify their names into what can be called "tiers" according to two criteria:

1. In terms of time: The ancient tier, such as Gerbert d'Aurillac and Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the modern tier, such as Carrade Vaux and Goldziher.
2. In terms of their general attitude toward Islam and Muslims in their writings: There is a tier of those who praise Islamic civilization and a tier of those who criticize and distort its reputation.

This is how every comprehensive study on Orientalism should be structured. However, from the specific social perspective that concerns us in this research and within the narrow scope defined by these lines, we deliberately choose a particular chapter, justified by the reasons for excluding the others.

It is clear that the early Orientalists influenced and perhaps continue to influence the course of ideas in the Western world without any impact on our thoughts as Muslims. What they wrote was undoubtedly the axis around which the ideas that led to the Renaissance in Europe revolved, while we see no trace of their influence in what we call the Islamic Renaissance today.

Let us, therefore, set their case aside for those interested in the study of general history, just as we set aside the case of the modern critics of Islamic civilization, even if they had some impact in stirring our pens or gained some fame in their time and their countries, such as Father Lammens. They do not fall within the scope of our research because their work, even if it somewhat touched our culture, did not comprehensively shape our intellectual direction. This is because our instincts naturally defended our cultural identity, much like what happened when the book On Pre-Islamic Poetry was published, following an assumption made a year earlier by the Orientalist Margoliouth. This book by Taha Hussein provoked a storm of outrage, interspersed with the lightning bolts of Mustafa Sadiq Al-Rafi’i’s retaliatory pen—may Allah have mercy on him.

On the contrary, however, we find that the praising Orientalists had a tangible impact, which we can understand to the extent that we realize there was no inherent reaction against them. Initially, there was no justification for a defensive stance, which thus became ineffective, as if its mechanism had become disabled for this reason.

Our topic here is to demonstrate the impact of this gap in our cultural defense system on the evolution of Islamic society’s ideas over the past century, particularly during the twentieth century.

Undoubtedly, Orientalists who praised Islamic civilization—such as Renaud, who translated the geography of Abu al-Fida in the mid-nineteenth century; Dozy, who revived interest in the golden age of Arab civilization in Spain; Sedillot, who spent his life striving to credit the Muslim astronomer and engineer Abu al-Wafa with discovering what is known in astronomy as the "second inequality of lunar motion"; and Asín Palacios, who uncovered the Arabic sources of The Divine Comedy—wrote in pursuit of scientific truth and historical accuracy, all for their own Western societies.

Yet their ideas had a greater impact on Islamic society, particularly among its educated classes.

The Muslim generation to which I belong owes these Western Orientalists the means to confront the inferiority complex that gripped the Islamic conscience in the face of Western civilization.

However, if we examine this issue in light of our modern experience and recent trials, we find that this influence was not entirely beneficial for the development of our thoughts and culture. In fact, it had a harmful effect, which we intend to explore in this discussion.

To understand this impact within our Islamic society, we must trace this type of Orientalism back to its historical origins.

Europe discovered Islamic thought in two distinct phases of its history. During the medieval period, before and after Thomas Aquinas, it sought to discover and translate Islamic thought to enrich its own culture. This effort led to the crucial steps that guided Europe to the Renaissance, which began in the late fifteenth century.

In the modern and colonial period, however, Europe rediscovered Islamic thought—not for cultural refinement but for political manipulation. This time, the goal was to shape its colonial strategies in a manner that suited the conditions of Islamic countries while also steering these conditions in ways that served Western policies. Perhaps, for some scholars, these efforts were merely an acknowledgment of the contributions of Muslim societies to human civilization. Without a doubt, Orientalists such as Sedillot and Gustave Le Bon exemplified pure scholarship and sincere dedication to scientific truth in their works.

However, it must be noted that this second encounter with Islamic thought occurred in a historical context in which Islamic knowledge was no longer a living science transmitted directly by contemporary scholars and their books. Instead, it had become akin to archaeology—discovered by European researchers almost by accident, accurately or inaccurately transmitted, and then either attributed to its original Muslim scholars or claimed by Europeans for themselves. This is how major discoveries were misattributed—such as William Harvey being credited with the discovery of pulmonary circulation, whereas it was actually described by the Muslim physician Ibn al-Nafis four centuries earlier.

Additionally, during this period, the Islamic world was experiencing a cultural shock caused by Western civilization. This shock resulted in two significant effects: a deeply felt inferiority complex on one hand and an attempt to overcome it—sometimes through trivial means—on the other.

This shock caused a form of paralysis in the cultural immune system of some Muslim intellectuals. Their inferiority complex led them to retreat in the face of the Western cultural onslaught, abandoning their intellectual defenses as if they were the remnants of a defeated army. At the very moment when the intellectual struggle between the Islamic world and the West was intensifying, some of these intellectuals sought refuge in adopting Western dress, tastes, and behaviors—sometimes merely for appearance’s sake, with no real engagement with Western civilization's core values.

A new idea began to emerge in the Islamic intellectual landscape, influenced by the cultural upheaval. This idea, which gained momentum after the 1857 Indian Rebellion, led to the establishment of Aligarh University and, on the other hand, sparked opposition from Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, the revivalist leader of the Islamic Renaissance.

Thus, in response to this cultural shock and the resulting inferiority complex, Islamic thought became divided into two camps: one advocating for the wholesale adoption of Western sciences, arts, and even clothing, and the other seeking to counteract this inferiority complex by embracing a form of ideological self-affirmation.

From an intellectual, political, and social perspective, this first trend had two manifestations: one represented by the founding of Aligarh University and the other by the movement led by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. Despite their differing goals, both were driven by external pressures that forced the Islamic world into a developmental path focused on material accumulation rather than cultural and intellectual growth.

The second trend, which is the subject of our discussion due to its connection with the works of Orientalists, found its natural narcotic in the literature of pride and glorification created by scholars such as Dozy about Islamic civilization.

However, we cannot, in any case, draw a sharp distinction between the two trends, as the second does not constitute an independent school separate from the first in a methodological sense. Rather, it permeates Islamic thought in general and intertwines with its overall direction, as a thought seeking an injection of pride to overcome the humiliation inflicted upon it by the victorious Western culture—much like an addict searching for a dose of narcotics to temporarily satisfy his unhealthy craving.

This does not mean that we should deny this trend and the type of literature it produced any positive impact on the fate of Islamic society, as it played a significant role in preserving its identity. The generation to which I belong, at the very least, owes it that much in maintaining its Islamic identity.

For example, I discovered, between the ages of fifteen and twenty, the glories of Islamic civilization through Dozy’s translation of Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah, as well as through the writings of Dozy and Ahmad Rida after World War I.

I am fully aware of the debt I owe to these readings, as I mentioned in the first volume of Memoirs of a Witness to the Century. Now, having passed the age of sixty, I am more capable than ever of assessing the effect of this intellectual and moral remedy—not only on a personal level but on the broader level of Islamic society over forty years after my own experience. Thus, I find it necessary to state here, albeit briefly, that the drawbacks of this method of treatment appear to me, in retrospect, to outweigh its benefits for multiple reasons.

The first reason is self-evident. Observing the psychological effects of an educational method—its pedagogy—naturally leads to the conclusion I am about to illustrate with a simple example.

When we speak to a poor man, who cannot afford his daily sustenance, about the vast wealth his ancestors once possessed, we may offer him temporary consolation. We provide him with a narcotic that momentarily detaches his mind and conscience from his current suffering. We soothe his pain, but we do not cure it.

Likewise, we do not cure the ailments of a society by merely recounting the glories of its past. There is no doubt that the skilled storytellers of post-Almohad generations narrated to Muslim audiences a version of One Thousand and One Nights, leaving their listeners, after each gathering, with a lingering euphoria that lulled them into sleep with enchanting visions of a luxurious past.

However, these masses would awaken the next day only to open their eyes once again to the harsh reality that surrounds them in their current state—one that is far from enviable.

Thus, literature that romanticizes the golden ages of Islamic civilization plays two roles: first, it provided, at a certain stage, an appropriate response to the Western cultural challenge, contributing—alongside other factors—to the preservation of Islamic identity. However, on the other hand, it instilled in this identity an admiration for a distant past rather than equipping it with the mindset needed for an era of productivity and action.

This observation may seem incidental in this discussion, but in my view, it is worthy of serious attention—not only from a sociological perspective but even more so in the context of the intellectual struggle in which the Islamic world is currently engaged.

If we were to define, as concisely as possible, what we call the "intellectual struggle" in the Islamic world, we must at least bear in mind this general rule: whenever a Muslim or Muslims raise an issue related to the fate of their society, we must assume that colonialism has already raised or will soon raise that issue. This is well-known to specialists in Islamic studies, who have undoubtedly examined or will examine it, and they will exert every effort—if Muslims manage to arrive at a viable solution—to distort that solution if it is correct or to widen its flaws if it is flawed. This is the simplest definition of the intellectual struggle.

Accordingly, if an initiative arises in the Islamic world—even if it remains unnoticed by us—it will quickly be detected by the surveillance mechanisms of those specialists. They will place it under the microscope of analysis, especially if it is even remotely related to the movement of ideas within the Islamic world and its revival. They will push the process of examination and analysis to its utmost limits, subjecting the results to a hundred processes of distillation and filtration until, by the time the initiative reemerges after these procedures, it contains as little correctness as possible and as many flaws as possible.

This means, in practical terms, that it will retain the least number of facilitating factors for implementation and the greatest number of obstacles making its application difficult or even impossible.

It is evident that the first form in which an initiative manifests is an intellectual form containing guiding ideas regarding the justifications and methodology of action. If these justifications are poisoned by doubt and skepticism, or if the methodology lacks the necessary clarity, action becomes difficult or even impossible.

Thus, the issue of guiding ideas is a fundamental one. Direction—when it comes to justifications—can either push forward or drag backward, depending on whether it is fixated, in an unhealthy manner, on the past.

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Source: Al-Wa'i Al-Islami Magazine, 1969.

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